


Ghost

by queenmolasses



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Horizon (Mass Effect), Hurt No Comfort, Light Angst, MELE got me thinkin about the space bf again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29208747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmolasses/pseuds/queenmolasses
Summary: He recognizes Delan’s voice—he's angry, accusatory, yelling at whoever got the turrets working again. At least anger means he’s alive.Then, unmistakably, he hears the woman who's haunted him for two years.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Kudos: 2





	Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Do we still want Horizon fics in 2021? I sure hope so.

There’s a certain catharsis to near-certain death: once the initial horror is over, the adrenaline rush brings everything into focus. And, apparently, once the venom of dickbag space wasps wears off, you can move pretty damn fast, even if your knees feel a little like jelly. Or a lot like jelly. It’s hard to tell when you’re running.   
  
It’s this frantic, recklessly fast sprint that carries Kaidan past empty prefabs and colonists helping each other struggle to their feet—colonists, he notes, who look shaken and pale, but otherwise unharmed. He zips through the garage, notices that Delan is nowhere to be found, and slows down for a moment to make sure he’s not overlooking the surly mechanic. And maybe he also stops because the adrenaline is wearing off, and he suddenly noticed that running through a colony at full speed left him a little breathless. But Delan isn’t in the garage, no one is, and he has to find who turned on the GARDIAN lasers; he’s running again before the sound of his blood rushing through his ears has a chance to stop.   
  
Kaidan slows again, just outside the spaceport, before reaching the tower. He can hear voices, and hopes that means more colonists made it, even if he hadn’t seen anyone else past the garage. He also realizes he hadn’t seen any more of those weird cocoons, either, and pushes the likely meaning for that out of his mind. He recognizes Delan’s voice—he's angry, accusatory, yelling at whoever got the turrets working again. At least anger means he’s alive.   
  
Then, unmistakably, he hears the woman who's haunted him for two years.   
  
There are shipping containers in the way, scorched and thrown around by the firefight. Kaidan weaves his way between them, pushing tipped crates out of the way with maybe more force than necessary, because maybe he’s rushing a little, until he finally reaches a point where the containers are mostly upright and the path clear. He strains to hear her over the sound of his heart pounding, grateful that the crates at least slowed him down enough for him to fully catch his breath. She sounds like she’s trying to reassure Delan, or maybe she’s reassuring herself; there’s a desperate edge in the way she’s speaking that sounds almost like a plea. He swears he hears Garrus but doesn’t process what he says beyond her name.   
  
Shepard _. Shepard._   
  
Delan isn’t yelling anymore, but there’s simmering fury in his words. A quiet kind of rage. He bitterly calls Shepard a hero. The word sounds like a condemnation. Kaidan steps around the last of the containers and his head spins.   
  
“Commander Shepard. Captain of the Normandy, the first human Spectre, ‘Savior of the Citadel’,” he pauses, still not quite believing what he’s seeing. She looks surprised. Her hands twitch at her sides and her lips part briefly before snapping back closed. She smiles, looks relieved to see him, and Kaidan looks away from her to glare at Delan. He’s not sure why he’s so mad at Delan—he knows that Shepard as an ideal meant a great deal to a lot of people, but the person was often lost under that; it wasn’t unusual for her to be met with indifference. “You’re in the presence of a legend, Delan.”   
  
He swallows thickly, looks back at her. Her hair is darker than he remembers, brown instead of the carefully maintained dark blonde she kept it. Even tied up he can tell it’s shorter, with strands falling in her face in a way they hadn’t before. He wants to tuck them back into place for her.   
  
“And a ghost.”   
  
Shepard fidgets under his scrutiny, shifting her weight from left foot to right. He knows that means she’s nervous, even if her expression doesn’t betray her feelings. He notices the scar through her right eyebrow is gone, as well as the one across her chin. He realizes that Garrus _is_ there, looking away from Shepard to see that the turian’s face is marred by fresh scars and held together with a compression patch; even his armor is burnt and broken. If he were a little more like Joker, he’d say Garrus looked like shit. There’s another woman there—somehow looking pristine with barely a hair out of place despite standing in the middle of what was clearly just a battleground—in black and yellow armor with an unfortunately familiar logo on the breast; someone he doesn’t recognize, watching him suspiciously. He feels something akin to anger at being looked at like that, by this woman in Cerberus armor, when he was assigned to this post, not dead Spectres or old friends or...whoever she is.   
  
“All the good people we lost and _you_ get left behind? Figures,” Delan’s disgusted remark pulls his focus back to the mechanic. “Screw this. I’m done with you Alliance types.”   
  
Kaidan idly watches Delan throw his hands up and storm off across the spaceport, gaze sliding past Garrus to Shepard again. He realizes how close he is to her; realizes with more urgency that he needs to be _closer_ to her, to touch her and make sure he’s not just imagining this. He’s walking before he can stop himself, stopping within arms’ reach of her to take in every detail of her face. She’s still freckled, but the spattering across her nose and cheeks isn’t as dense as he remembers; her skin doesn’t have the same sun-kissed glow it used to. There are fresh scars along her cheeks and jaw, jagged and raw, still healing, and he wants to touch them. He meets her eyes again. The milky haze is gone from her right eye; whatever took the scar that caused the blindness in that eye took the cataract with it. But it's still _her_ , and he's overwhelmed by how beautiful he thinks her hazel eyes are. He wants to kiss her.   
  
Instead, he pulls her into a tight embrace; feels her wrap her arms around him just as tight. She presses her face against the side of his neck, dropping her forehead against his shoulder, and he feels the tension leave her shoulders. He can feel the staticky crackle of her biotics still rippling around her, familiar and alien all at once; he can feel heat still radiating off her shotgun. Holding her like this almost makes it feel like he never lost her. She feels real and alive and for a moment he’s afraid she’ll vanish if he lets her go.   
  
“I thought you died, Shepard,” his words are soft, barely whispered into her hair, “We all did.”   
  
He holds her a second longer, wants to let his hands linger against any part of her he can touch; he wants to hold her hands in his, rub his thumbs over her knuckles like he used to. Kaidan steps back, hands falling limply to his sides, and Shepard smiles at him in a sad way.   
  
“It’s been too long, Kaidan,” hearing her say his name hits him like a bullet, “How’ve you been?”   
  
And with that, the anger he’d been holding back boils over. He doesn’t understand how she can be so casual, how she can still look so composed, when he’s spent the last two years mourning her. He scoffs.   
  
“Is that all you have to say? You show up after _two years,_ ” he emphasizes his words by jerkily holding up two fingers, and remembers her teasing him for always talking with his hands, _“_ and just act like nothing happened?”   
  
Kaidan’s not sure but he thinks he might be shaking—from anger, from the migraine pressing at his temples, from the exhaustion slowly creeping into every fiber of his being, he’s not sure. He drags a hand down his face, sighing.   
  
“I thought we had something, Shepard. Something real,” he’s whispering again, throat aching and tight but he won’t lose control like that right now. Not in front of Garrus and this Cerberus agent who, he notes, is now a short distance away scanning a husk and pointedly looking anywhere but at him. He sighs again. It almost sounds like a laugh. “I loved you. Thinking you were dead tore me apart. How could you put me through that?”   
  
Shepard’s fidgeting again. Her weight shifts from right to left; she’s picking at the tips of her gloves. She looks confused, hurt; he knows she’s trying to find the right words. Kaidan wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until answers fall out. He feels his eye twitch as his head begins to pound in earnest.   
  
“Why didn’t you try to contact me? Why didn’t you let me know you were _alive_?”   
  
Kaidan doesn’t think he’s raised his voice to an unacceptable level, but it was apparently loud enough to make Shepard’s new teammate turn to look at him. They make eye contact and this strange woman holds his gaze from nehind her visor for just a moment, tactical and scrutinizing, assessing how much of a threat he is, before looking down at her omnitool again. Garrus doesn’t meet his gaze, doesn’t look up from the patch of scorched grass he's moved away to stand over, and maybe Kaidan appreciates that.   
  
“It wasn’t my choice,” now _that_ definitely sounded like a plea, “I spent the last two years in some kind of coma while Cerberus rebuilt me.”   
  
He steps away from her like being too close will burn him. He feels sick in a detached sort of way, like when you hear about a fatal accident or natural disaster. Shepard looks worried again; she looks like she wants to reach out to him, but holds herself in place, still picking at the fingertips of her gloves. Kaidan isn’t sure what he’d do if she tried to touch him right now.   
  
“You’re...working with Cerberus?” He shakes his head. The migraine is starting to make everything fuzzy. It’s pissing him off. “Garrus too.”   
  
Garrus, who had taken a couple of cautious steps closer, at least had the decency to look apologetic. Or, Kaidan supposed, as apologetic as a turian could look. Immobile faceplates made it hard to tell exactly what emotion was being conveyed.   
  
“I can’t believe the reports were right...”   
  
Shepard’s brow furrows; there's a question in her mouth but she doesn't ask it. The Cerberus agent boldly approaches to stand at Shepard’s right. Kaidan considers throwing her across the spaceport with his biotics.   
  
“Reports?” Garrus’ interruption was timely, “You mean, you already knew?”   
  
Kaidan decides he isn’t going to look at Shepard or the Cerberus agent. He looks at Garrus instead and nods.   
  
“Alliance intel thought Cerberus might be behind the missing colonies. They got a tip this colony might be the next one to get hit,” he finally looks at Shepard again. He recognizes the look on her face, knows she’s changed the question she wants to ask, that she's thinking. He wonders if she’s thinking of an excuse. “Anderson stonewalled me. But there were rumors that you weren’t dead. That you were working for the enemy.”   
  
Shepard frowns at him, the thoughtful furrow of her brow gone; she wasn’t fidgeting anymore. He knew that look of resolution well.  
  
“Cerberus and I want the same thing: to save our colonies,” it’s not a full admission, but her words twist in his gut like a knife, “That doesn’t mean I answer to them.”   
  
“Do you really believe that?” Kaidan’s so angry he can barely see straight. Or maybe that’s the migraine. It’s probably both. He takes a step closer to Shepard, unable to stand still. “Or is that just what Cerberus wants you to think?”   
  
For a moment, Kaidan understands Delan’s disgust. He understands the distrust he’s been met with since landing on Horizon. If this is what the Alliance’s best are capable of, why should anyone trust them? How could he trust anything Shepard had to say now?   
  
“I wanted to believe the rumors that you were alive, but I never expected anything like _this_.”   
  
There’s sadness, welling up beneath the anger. Shepard didn’t even look apologetic, just hurt, confused, and a little angry herself. Defensive, if he had to put a specific word to it. Kaidan wants to believe this is some kind of prank, a joke; maybe he’s dreaming. He can’t understand why Shepard, who had been so openly disgusted with Cerberus two years ago, who saw the atrocities they committed; who believed so ardently that humanity had to learn to work with other species, would suddenly ally herself with the enemy.   
  
“You turned your back on everything we believed in. You betrayed the Alliance,” the words come spilling out of him, and he collects himself, lowering his voice, “You betrayed _me_.”   
  
She’s searching his face, either trying to think of something clever or something to butter him up with. She was always good at saying what he wanted to hear. But there’s nothing she can say right now that could change the bone-deep ache of betrayal; not with a Cerberus agent at her heels in a half-empty colony.   
  
“Kaidan, you _know_ me,” that, he thinks, sounds a little desperate, “You _know_ I’d only do this for the right reason. You saw it yourself,” she gestures at the empty spaceport, “The Collectors are targeting human colonies and they’re working with the Reapers.”   
  
He can’t deny that she’s right. The frozen colonists coming , the broken bodies of husks, and the empty cocoons ready for colonists the Collectors weren’t able to snatch up he saw littered across the colony on his sprint over here proved that. But seeing her here, immediately after an attack—always the hero, always right on time—it was difficult to not believe the rumors about her and Cerberus. At the same time, she’d activated the colony’s defenses, reopened communications. Even with heavy losses, there were still colonists on Horizon. A million thoughts swirl through his mind, and for a moment, he lets himself believe her. Kaidan raises a hand to his forehead, pressing hard, before taking a deep breath.   
  
“I want to believe you, Shepard, but I don’t trust Cerberus. They could be using the threat of the Reapers to manipulate you,” he could’ve laughed at himself, nearly spitting the Council’s words at her like that, knowing how much she hated their dismissal of the Reaper threat.   
  
“What if _they’re_ behind it?” Kaidan swears he sees Shepard's eyes flicker to the Cerberus agent, an unmistakably distrustful gesture. Maybe her loyalty to Cerberus wasn’t as solid as he believed. “What if they’re working with the Collectors?”   
  
“Typical Alliance attitude,” Kaidan’s surprised by the Cerberus agent’s flippant tone; he’s actually surprised she spoke at all. He figured she was just going to keep silently glowering at him. The Australian accent is, he muses, a pleasant surprise. He watches her cross her arms and frown at him, “You’re so focused on Cerberus you’re blind to the real threat.” He considers throwing her with his biotics again.   
  
Shepard shifts to move herself ever so slightly between him and the Cerberus agent. Kaidan wonders if she picked up on his thoughts; wonders what gave him away. Wonders if she’s really protecting this Cerberus agent or just trying to physically recenter herself in this conversation. He briefly considers throwing her, too.   
  
“Kaidan,” she uses his name softly and he wants to scream, “You’re letting the way you feel about their history get in the way of the facts.”   
  
Kaidan scoffs at that, shaking his head in disbelief. She knew their history too. This would all be hilarious if he didn’t feel like he was actually going crazy.   
  
“Maybe. Or maybe _you_ feel like you owe Cerberus because they saved you. Maybe _you’re_ the one who's not thinking straight,” he knows that Shepard is stubborn, that words alone won’t change her mind, but he has _so many_ words caught in his throat and he has _so much_ to say to her, “You’ve changed. But I know where my loyalties lie. I’m an Alliance soldier, and I always will be.”   
  
He shakes his head again, the movement causing another sharp burst of throbbing. He thinks he sees something like defeat on Shepard’s face.   
  
“I have to report back to the Citadel. _They_ can decide if they believe your story or not.”   
  
She looks down at that. Kaidan isn’t sure exactly how Shepard came to be with Cerberus. He isn’t sure if she really spent two years in a coma. He isn’t sure if she’s doing this because she thinks it's what’s right or if Cerberus is coercing her into doing it; part of him even wonders, briefly, if they’ve threatened her into helping. It doesn't seem like something outside of their capabilities. What he _is_ sure of, is that he wants to reach out and touch the new scars on her face; he wants to tell her to go back to the Alliance. He wants to say something nice, to alleviate some of the sadness he catches in her eyes, but doesn’t have anything nice to say, so he turns around.   
  
“I could use someone like you on my crew, Kaidan,” it’s gentle, optimistic; it makes his chest tighten, because under any other circumstances, he would want nothing more than to accept her offer, “It’ll be just like old times.”   
  
Ah, there it was. Still so stubborn and thick-headed she’d let him rant like that, lay out two years' worth of pent-up hurt and anger and still try to convince him to see her side, that all of this was okay. Kaidan isn’t sure what two years means to Shepard, or what loyalty means to her anymore, but it was too much for him to act like nothing’s changed. He turns back to face her.   
  
“No, it won’t,” even he thinks that sounds cold, “I’ll never work for Cerberus.”   
  
Kaidan looks her over again: her hair the wrong color, scars and freckles missing, new scars lining her face that he can’t soothe. He softens a little when she looks at him—Commander Shepard, always stoic, but her eyes look a little wetter than they did before.   
  
“Goodbye, Shepard. And be careful,” it’s the kindest thing he can offer before he turns and leaves. He doesn’t give her a chance to argue. He doesn’t look up when the Normandy sails overhead.   
  
Kaidan gets halfway across the colony before he collapses. He sits in the grass with his back against a tipped over trash can, and looks up at Horizon’s sky and thinks it looks a little mistier than it should’ve. He sits there for a long while, long enough for the sun to start to set, before dragging himself to his feet. If the colonists notice anything off about him when he finally reappears, they’re polite enough to not say anything. 

Later, after ensuring the remaining colonists on Horizon were safe, a flight back to the Citadel, a handful of painkillers dry-swallowed before briefing Anderson, a nap, and maybe more beers than one person necessarily needs to have all at once, Kaidan reflects. He’s good at that, he guesses: reflection and introspection. That’s what Shepard would say, at least. He thinks about the relief on Shepard’s face upon seeing him again—pushes aside the thought that she was worried the Collectors had taken him with the colonists—about how she sagged in his arms, like the weight of the galaxy had been lifted from her shoulders, and how, if he really thought about it, some of the tears he saw in her eyes might’ve made it to her cheeks. He thinks about how disorienting it was to see her again, to touch her again, to feel her breathing under his palms as he held her to his chest. He wonders again if she was really in a coma, or if she really died over Alchera, and what exactly Cerberus did to bring her back. Or if they’d brought her back at all, or if she went to them voluntarily. He could at least doubt that last one.   
  
He heaves a sigh, drops heavily into a dining chair in the kitchen of the ritzy hotel suite he’d been put up in on the Citadel. He drums his fingers on the table a few times, pulls up his omnitool, closes it again. He repeats this a dozen times before finally opening his email, opening a new message, and closing everything again after entering a familiar extranet mailing address. He rests his elbows on the table, dropping his face into his hands and combing his fingers through his hair.   
  
He has two years of drafts saved, unsent messages full of every emotion he’s felt since that cold morning over Alchera, all addressed to _her_. Two years of grief and hurt and trying _so hard_ to move on. He thinks about sending one of those, maybe a couple of them; decides that’s a little too pathetic, even if he’s feeling pretty pathetic, and scrubs his face with his hands. The thought that, maybe, she also has two years of drafts saved for him briefly crosses his mind. He wonders if Cerberus kept her from contacting the Alliance directly for two years. He wonders if Hades’ dogs have her collared. The last thought makes him shudder.   
  
Kaidan sighs again, sitting upright; he pulls up his omnitool again and actually starts typing a message this time. He isn’t sure if he wants to apologize, or explain, or ask the dozens of questions rattling around in his skull. Seeing her again dredged up so many feelings he thought he'd moved on from. Rather, that he'd convinced himself he'd moved on from. Leaving her on Horizon felt wrong, the way they parted left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he wanted to do anything to make it right. He spends over an hour trying to just put his jumbled thoughts into words. He wants to tell her he still loves her, that he still wants to believe she’s doing the right thing. He wants to tell her that there’s part of him that still trusts her, or he thinks he does, even if he doesn’t trust who she’s working for. There’s so much more that he wants to say, but this isn’t the time, and an email isn’t the way he wants to do it. He hopes Shepard understands that. He hopes he’ll get a chance to see her again, after she stops the Collectors, or walks away from Cerberus, or whatever happens. He wonders, momentarily, if she’ll even receive this, if she’ll care, or if Cerberus would flag and delete his message. He wonders if the shrewd-looking Cerberus agent would read it before forwarding it to Shepard; if the Illusive Man himself would see it. He almost laughs at that.   
  
‘ _Nothing ventured, nothing gained_ ,’ he thinks to himself after reading the message for the nth time, and hits send before he can second guess himself anymore.   
  
He stands and stretches, wandering over to the window to watch skycars pass by; the skyline illuminated with city lights that look like a thousand stars in the Citadel’s artificial night. After two years, most of the visible damage from Sovereign and the geth had been repaired; the full extent of the invasion erased as quickly as possible by the keepers’ deft little hands and hundreds of construction crews. So much of the truth, about Saren and the Reapers and Shepard, wiped from public knowledge. He thinks, briefly, that it isn’t fair that she nearly sacrificed herself two years ago, just to later be dismissed by the Council and the Alliance; wonders if maybe that’s why she was with Cerberus now. Maybe she's still the hero, just on the wrong side. He leans against the cool glass and tries to push the doubts he has out of his mind; remembers three weeks of bliss buried under two years of pain. Kaidan lets himself remember the Shepard he knew: Commander Shepard, hero of the Blitz, the Savior of the Citadel; young and bright and so optimistic, even when faced with uncertainly and impossible circumstances. He remembers the woman who boldly flirted with him, made him feel human, and was ripped away from him before they could really figure out what they were. He sighs, rubs his eyes; he’s suddenly so tired he can barely stand.   
  
Kaidan drifts to the too-soft hotel bed on autopilot. He sleeps fitfully, dreaming of red, ragged scars; of Cerberus logos and hazel eyes. 


End file.
